Saturday, March 8, 2008

Musical AirPort (Express)

I've been wanting to stream music @home from my iTunes to my entertainment system. I didn't want to run a long cable, and didn't want to get too fancy or spend too much. Today Blake and I were spending the afternoon in the mall, and did our weekly trip to Mecca (i.e., the Apple Store at Northpoint) and I picked up an AirPort Express. Since I already have 4 or 5 wireless routers I hadn't considered a need for the AirPort. However, I noted that it had a mini jack out for music, a USB port for printers, and an Ethernet jack - and iTunes will send music its way just like any other speaker.

In short, it works great. I understand it will work over my normal wireless, but I just set it up as a network on the iMac for a peer to peer configuration. Setting it up was brainless (good for weekend projects). What rocks is the range - I put it up in Blake's room which is on the 3rd floor, and on the other side of the house from the Mac. It shows full signal in the status bar. Sweet. He's all excited, too - he can stream his music to his room (of course, he has all the CD's in his room already, but this arrangement is more fun!)